


I tell my love to wreck it all

by pinkchiffon



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Classic Kylux, M/M, canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 03:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12424224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkchiffon/pseuds/pinkchiffon
Summary: Kylo Ren has always been at odds with his Finalizer co-commander, General Hux. Clashing on almost everything, the one thing they're able to agree on is the function of their current arrangement. It's purely physical and nothing more. Kylo prefers it this way, and even if he doesn't, Hux doesn't have to know that.





	I tell my love to wreck it all

**Author's Note:**

> I was in the mood for some angst, and this is what happened.
> 
> The title comes from the lyrics "I tell my love to wreck it all / Cut out all the ropes and let me fall," from Bon Iver's "Skinny Love."
> 
> **Warnings** in the end notes, if you don't want any surprises.

“I’m never going to love you.”

Kylo blinks once and lets his eyes refocus on the man lying in bed next to him. Hux’s face has already returned to its impassive mask, no hint of the passions of only a few minutes ago still lingering. His hair is slightly mussed against the pillow, the shine of sweat glistening on his sharp cheekbones, but his eyes are clear and serious. 

Kylo wants to tell him that he looks beautiful. 

Instead he says, “I know.”

Apparently this answer isn’t satisfactory, because Hux shifts up onto his elbow and continues. “I don’t want you thinking that this arrangement is anything that it’s not.” 

“Don’t worry, I know exactly what this is.” Kylo risks trailing a hand down Hux’s side, resting it against the sharp point of his hipbone. 

Hux shakes Kylo off as he rises from the bed, reaching for his dressing gown. “Good. I’m glad that’s settled.” He gives Kylo a pointed look as he ties it around his waist, and Kylo knows that’s his cue to leave.

As he gets dressed as quickly as possible, Kylo can’t help but focus on the fact that Hux referred to this as an “arrangement.” So, this is going to a be a regular thing, then. Not just three separate occasions of frustration and fighting that turned to battle of a different sort, a battle of nails and teeth digging into flesh, a battle where Hux would murmur things into Kylo’s skin, things that left him guessing what was truth and what was just part of the game. 

Before he knows it, Kylo is at the bedroom door, turned to Hux. He’s waiting for something, but he doesn’t know what. 

Hux turns around, looking surprised that Kylo is still there. “You may return to my quarters tomorrow evening.”

Kylo nods and turns from the room with a swish of his cape. As he walks down the corridors of the _Finalizer_ , he thinks about the promise of tomorrow night, and possibly the next night. It’s more than he’s ever had with anyone else, so it will be enough.

Kylo opens the door to his own quarters and stares at the empty bed.

It will be enough. 

***

Things changed after Starkiller. 

Everything was so, so blurry and distant as Kylo lay there in the snow, awaiting the death he certainly deserved, until Hux appeared through the flurries, hair bright enough to rival the burning all around them. His face was stony with the kind of anger that Kylo had come to recognize as the kind that hides his fear. 

Kylo’s only clear thought was that Hux looked like an angel, like in the old stories the deep space pilots would tell him when he was a child. Beautiful enough to strike terror into the hearts of the people they laid eyes on. 

Hux doesn’t visit him in the medbay, after. Not once, which makes sense, Kylo reasons. Hux needs him for one thing only, and he’s far from agile enough for their usual activities at the moment. Hux will come see him when he’s back in shape enough for Hux’s liking. 

On the day of his release, Hux is there to guide Kylo back to his rooms. Kylo is still too hazy to register that this level of consideration might be unusual, but he snaps out of it the second Hux takes his arm to steady him. They’re touching from that moment until they reach Kylo’s door, where Hux pushes him inside and begins removing his own uniform. Kylo tries to keep up, but his muscles are stiff from so much time in bed. Hux starts to help him, moving his robes carefully around his still-bandaged bowcaster wound and over the slash on his shoulder.

In the moments that follow, every thought in Kylo’s head starts to collide. The Hux moving over him now is overlaid with the Hux rescuing him in the snow, and Kylo is unsure if the sharp bites on his neck and chest are from the icy snowflakes or Hux’s mouth. 

Kylo keeps biting at his bottom lip to stop forbidden words from spilling out, but through the nebulous euphoria in the moments following his climax, he can’t stop them. 

“I love you.”

The words hang in the air, and Kylo can almost see Hux’s expression change with each syllable. He rolls off Kylo, onto his back, and stares at the ceiling. “I really wish you hadn’t said that.”

Kylo honestly doesn’t know why he did. His whole life has been warning after warning that nothing good ever comes of this treacherous entity called love. Back when he was Ben, his parents showed him that love was something that ripped people apart from within, a painful struggle that caused more torment than pleasure. Snoke told him that the only attachment that mattered was the one between a master and his apprentice, that desires of a romantic nature have no use to him now.

Kylo thought he wouldn’t give his heart away so easily.

“I told you this wasn’t like that,” Hux says to the ceiling. 

“Nothing has to change,” Kylo protests. He rolls onto his side to look at Hux, just in case he has indeed ruined things, and this is the last time he’ll get to see Hux like this. He’s so slight, without his big coat; Kylo could count the freckles on his slim shoulders. 

Hux turns to look at Kylo and sneers. “I don’t want to break Snoke’s favorite toy,” he says, the bitterness biting at the parts of Kylo he left vulnerable. 

“I don’t care. _I don’t care_ , Hux,” Kylo spits, frowning to match Hux. “You warned me. Now you can hurt me.” 

Hux reaches over and digs his nails into Kylo’s bicep. “This isn’t a relationship.” 

“I know,” Kylo says, trying not to let the relief that Hux is touching him creep into his voice. 

“This,” Hux says, pulling Kylo so close that their lips are only breaths apart, “is nothing to me.”

“I don’t care,” Kylo repeats. “Just don’t leave.” 

It’s then that Hux indulges him with a kiss. 

***

Now that it’s already been said, Kylo doesn’t have to hold back anymore. If the occasional whispered endearment slips out in a moment of passion, Hux will only roll his eyes at Kylo’s ridiculous sentiments. 

Over time, Hux’s quarters become more familiar than Kylo’s own. The only time he returns to his personal rooms is in the early hours of the morning, when Hux wakes for his first shift on the bridge. 

Even after long months away from the _Finalizer_ , Hux’s door is still his first stop. 

“What’s that?” Kylo asks as he enters Hux’s bedroom, gesturing to a contraption on a tripod.

“A camera,” Hux answers, motioning to turn it off. 

Kylo straightens, suddenly alert. “Are we making a sex tape?” 

Hux at least smiles at that. “Kriff, no. I’m working on my next speech, recording it and watching for mistakes.” He steps behind the camera and frowns, as if still finding faults in himself even with the machine turned off. 

Kylo sits down at the edge of the bed, right in front of the camera. “Film me.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

Kylo shrugs. “Don’t you want to remember any of this? When you’re old and we’re living in different systems, you’ll want to remember.”

“Different systems?” Hux raises an eyebrow. 

“Yeah, once the Order wins the war, you’ll probably be living on some new military base, and I’ll be back with Snoke, finishing my training.”

“Still more training?” Hux asks, removing his uniform jacket and folding it neatly. 

“My training will continue until Snoke says I’m ready.” 

“Ah.” Hux glances at Ren. “Why are you still dressed?”

Instead of apologizing, Kylo decides to make up for it by putting on a little show for Hux. Getting slowly to his feet, Kylo struts toward him, beginning to peel off his robes as he moves closer. He smirks at Hux’s attempts to remain impassive, when he’s clearly hanging on every motion of Kylo’s hands, every piece of newly exposed skin as his clothes drop to the floor. 

Hux is able to keep up his act of impatience until Kylo is completely nude, standing just out of reach. As Kylo lazily trails his hands over his naked body, something in Hux’s gaze shifts. Nothing about this fits Hux’s perfect model of efficiency, but he sits down on the bed and allows himself to enjoy it anyway.

Kylo tries to make it count.

***

After, Kylo is startled from his dozing by Hux’s weight leaving his side of the bed. He opens his eyes slowly to be met with Hux sticking the camera in his face. Kylo laughs and says, “What, changed your mind?”

Hux brushes a lock of Kylo’s hair out of his eyes and wraps his fingers around it. “No. This is the part I want to remember. How I seduced the strongest Force user of our time into my bed and took him apart. How he was at my mercy.” Hux tugs on Kylo’s hair, smirking at him.

“The strongest Force user?” Kylo laughs. “Don’t let Snoke hear you say that.” 

“I’d take you over Snoke any day.” 

Kylo grins at Hux’s good mood, deciding to have some fun. “I _looove_ ya, Hux,” he says in a sing-song tone. 

Hux frowns, but he doesn’t lower the camera. “Why must you ruin everything?”

Kylo blows a kiss at the camera lens, and that’s the last straw for Hux. He sets down the camera next to the bed and climbs in next to Kylo. Hux orders the lights to zero percent, and they face the darkness together. 

“Hux?”

“Don’t say it.”

“…I won’t.”

***

It’s been nearly thirty years since then, and Hux has finally stopped recognizing himself when he looks in the mirror. His hair is now fully gray, not a hint of the red that Ren always loved so much. His face is weathered with wrinkles to the point that he’s hardly recognizable as the man who used to be the most wanted being in the galaxy, the First Order’s missing General Hux. 

When the Order fell with a crash, Hux and Phasma were already long gone, having left for Wild Space several cycles ago. Hiding in civilian life was a bit hard to adjust to, working in the shipyards instead of commanding an army, but Hux knew his newly calloused hands were worth the price of his life. 

They were the same calloused hands he stared at as he watched the funeral on the holonet. 

It was a big affair, with all the Resistance’s best and brightest out to mourn their fallen boy, Ben Solo, prodigal son in the end. They say that he redeemed himself in his last moments. Hux doesn’t buy it; Ren was never looking for forgiveness. 

Hux sits in the little shack he shares with Phasma and concludes the day the same way he has for nearly three decades. He takes out his old datapad and scrolls through his old files, the files that he is forever grateful he never deleted before things turned bad. Hux selects the file he’s looking for, and he watches Ren come into focus.

The sound stopped working years ago—no one, not even Hux, remembers how to fix a datapad as ancient as this one—but it doesn’t matter, since Hux can still hear the voices echoing all the way from that night on the _Finalizer_. 

Ren laughs at Hux filming him, his crooked smile pressing down into the pillow. He shifts up onto his elbows when he talks, and Hux watches the muscles of his mole-speckled back move, the light catching his eyes just right.

Hux watches his own hand, a hand that might as well be from another life, brush a piece of Ren’s soft hair out of his face. His foolish past self tugs at Ren’s hair, making the other man laugh. 

He wants to tell himself not to let go. 

Ren grimaces slightly when he says Snoke’s name, but then he’s back to his usual bantering self. Well, usual around Hux, at least. Free of his anger, free of his loneliness. Just a bit less lost. 

Then he smiles, and Hux braces himself for the worst part. 

Hux can read his lips, teasing “I love you, Hux,” and then blowing him a ridiculous kiss with those beautiful lips. 

Hux wishes he could beg himself to keep filming.

He wishes he could tell himself that he’s being incredibly stupid.

He wishes he could tell himself that he’ll live into his sixties and never, ever deserve Ren. 

But the video comes to an abrupt stop anyway.

Hux looks up from the datapad and finds Phasma watching him with concern, as she does from time to time. 

“I told him that I’d never love him.”

Phasma doesn’t say anything, having had this conversation before. It’s the same dialogue each time.

Hux hangs his head.

“Oh, how naive I was.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warnings:** major character death
> 
> A million thanks to my beta-reader [Kana](https://sraawrats.tumblr.com/) for the support, encouragement, and all the rounds of edits!
> 
> You can find me on tumblr [here](https://adamderiver.tumblr.com/).


End file.
